If there was ever a story about overcoming the odds, incredible courage and self-determination, it belongs to Dilworth Old Boy Lee Taniwha.
On tough days, Lee Taniwha (Class of 2010) will pull himself up by the bootstraps, remembering how bad things were for him. Says Lee, “I recall lying on my back counting the dots on the roof panels in the hospital ceiling, and you know it’s bad when you have to count those dots”. So when he gets frustrated now, he says, “ At least I’m not doing that. I remind myself not to squander my life, my gifts.”
Eighteen years ago, at the end of Year 9, a misfired dive into the shallow end of his cousin’s swimming pool left Lee tetraplegic and in a wheelchair.
To start with, Lee could only move an arm, which progressed to two arms; months of lying in the hospital followed.
Lee: “I couldn’t wipe my tears away, and the loss of independence was the worst thing. I had a tube stuck down my throat so that I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t breathe. One lung collapsed, I got pneumonia, so that was me for a month. How do you come back from that?”
It took a year of rehab, some great teachers who inspired him and a strong family who, in Lee’s words, were still prepared to “tell him off” to do just that. As he was lying in intensive care, feeling wrecked and that everything was hopeless, he remembers his Dad saying, “You aren’t the worst here, son, you’ve got no excuse”. Tough talking perhaps, but Lee says getting put in his place was what he needed because no one had been able to get through to him, and he credits his family with giving him the push he needed to find himself again.
The big question, he said, was working out “How can I be who I am?” and coming to terms with life in a wheelchair.
The Lee of today is a far cry from the teenager lying in that hospital bed. He is a successful entrepreneur. CEO of Care Upfront, a start-up focused on helping other people recover from brain and spinal injuries. Care Upfront has around 50 clients and over 200 staff across the country and contracts with ACC. Lee, who firmly believes in ‘servant leadership’, sees that his role is to understand the needs of those people whose experience he shared. He and his team have helped over 500 people so far recover after accidents or medical events. People who, as Lee puts it, are ‘freshly broken’.
Starting out, Lee saw a gap in service: “People would go home and be left lying on a bed, and that’s where Care Upfront came in. We provide care the minute they get out of the hospital with brain or spinal injuries”. Lee used his experience to build a great team, and great Directors steer the company. He says Care Upfront’s clients get a team that ‘gets it’ to help them rehab in body, spirit and mind.
‘None of them planned to be in a wheelchair”, comments Lee.
Lee Taniwha is one of 13 children. Adopted into a big South Auckland family as a ‘middle child,’ Lee’s grandmother pushed him to consider Dilworth. While Lee is reluctant to talk up his strengths, it becomes clear that his grandmother knew he was bright, saw something special in Lee, and wanted the best for him.
He recalls it was one of his primary teachers as well as his dentist who suggested Dilworth to his family “We met a teacher who came to my primary school, and he was just finishing a placement at Dilworth, and said to Mum, 'Your son might be worth getting into the school”.
Lee wasn’t keen on Dilworth to start with. Using his characteristic humour, he comments: “See, in my mind, I was dead set on going to St. Kents, but we didn't have St. Kents’ money. We had public school, Manurewa money.”
All the same, it was a big stretch for Lee to leave his tight-knit family to attend Dilworth in Year 9, and he readily admits to feeling homesick for a bit. He says it took until about Term 3 before he felt ‘at home’. He can remember when the tipping point came. It was on a bus trip home from a trip to Waiwera; he and the guys were telling tales and messing around, and Lee says he just ‘felt right’.
His Dilworth mates are clearly a massive part of his life, and he talks about them a lot. But equally, he also talks about working hard and studying.
Study has also been a massive part of Lee’s life, a driving force. Incredibly, after spending six months in hospital after his accident, he started correspondence school from Starship Hospital. Jokes Lee: “They even gave me some NCEA credits,” which was a bonus.
Even more incredibly, Lee pushed himself to return to Dilworth as a day student later in Year 10. He said the staff at Dilworth were brilliant, adding extra ramps where he needed them and doing everything they could to ease him back into school. But it wasn’t all plain sailing, and some stark realities existed.
Lee: “I had to come back as a spectator. It shook me, and my smile covered the dark clouds”.
The effort of getting to Dilworth each morning, he said, was something no one would have understood: “ So I would get up at 6 am, drive to Dilworth, but that was only part of it. When you have a spinal injury, you need to organise yourself – toileting, showering - it takes forever, and I would feel wrecked by the time I got to school”. The contrast between the struggles of his mates against his own was often infuriating. “The boys were talking about games and childhood stuff to me”.
But “His boys” as he calls them, also made the difference for Lee. “They held me up so I could speak to them about things… I used to do my best to level with all the boys, check in with all my brothers”. Some excellent teachers also ‘got him’ - he mentions Mike Dodge, his House Master. He credits Mike with helping to focus him on his study, to the point where one day a teacher said to his class “How come this one (pointing to Lee) - who can’t use his hands properly - is doing better than all of you?!” Over time Lee says with focus on study and learning to give the other students “A little grace”’ he started to see life through a different lens.
“Dilworth was a huge gift, but you don’t realise until after. It’s like a relationship you had, then they leave you and you realise what you had”.
He was asked to be a Dilworth Prefect in Year 13 and says he was privileged to undertake the role. He said it worked because he connected differently with many boys who felt he could relate to them: “Everyone sees your vulnerability, and you are on the level with the smaller boys in wheelchairs.”
Somewhere along the way, Lee says he learned to be ‘his kind of leader’ at Dilworth.
University came next, and Lee finished a design degree. He said he was going through the motions and quickly realised he didn’t want to focus on design. Still, it led him to his first role as a volunteer designer for Discovery Kids, helping children recover from the Christchurch earthquake.
Next came a project close to his heart and home: “The Humans of South Auckland.” He worked on the stories of the heroes who promoted positivity in South Auckland, helping change young people's perceptions of the community.
But Lee's break, his lightbulb moment, came when he landed a Peer Support role at the Auckland Spinal Unit and found he had a gift for supporting and getting through to people. Lee says he was able to guide patients through difficult conversations about their future after injury because he knew what they were going through.
“I helped them have those conversations, the hard ones. Like what is the expectation for your marriage, your sex life, your parenting, all the roles you have?”. He said he worked with people between 15 and 70: “That guy in that room, he may have a lot of money, but he’s still here; the lady over here, she has lots of kids - all in the same situation”.
Lee said the key was remembering that “No one chooses to be here.” So he would say to people, “Now it is your time to lean into it, to learn what comes next.”
Noticing gaps in post-hospital care and understanding what people needed, he and his fellow Directors founded Care UpFront, which provides specialised caregiving services for people with spinal and brain injuries. The business started by partnering with an established company to work with ACC contracts and has grown significantly since then.
Along the way, Lee has chosen to continue further study, reading widely to increase his understanding further and support people. His faith has also guided his journey. He says, “Nothing (faith-wise) made sense until I left school. God was just a word you said inside church when the organ played.”
Above all, Lee says he has chosen to adopt a powerful mindset that moves him forward, gets on with it, and focuses on what he can do rather than on what he can’t.
When Lee recently spoke to Dilworth students at Founder’s Day 2025, he left a clear message for students and everyone present about their ability to change their thoughts through words, actions, and habits.
Lee Taniwha has overcome the odds in a way that most of us would find inconceivable. He is humble and can laugh at himself; he uses humour to make others comfortable and cut through barriers. But his incredible self-awareness, his journey to improve, his drive and his willingness to take nothing for granted stand out despite all he has faced.